The New Blogger.com Is Live and Out of Beta

The new Blogger service is coming out of beta as I'm writing this (2006-12-19, between 8:30 and 8:45 PM EST), and you'll notice that everything that was going to beta.blogger.com before is now being handled by www2.blogger.com. This post is actually being served by the new Blogger environment.

Here are screenshots of what we were faced with for a few minutes.



All seems to now be back online, since I can post this, and you can read it. :)
A bit sluggish right now (still caching?), but back and kicking nonetheless.

The reason I found out was that I was writing another post when I noticed a most likely AJAX activated box, under the editing area, that was warning me that the app could not connect to the db for saving. Advanced warning? Very nice feature in and of itself, if true, since I don't remember clicking the save or publish buttons. Would be interesting to implement if not. Might have been the live preview though, but I didn't think the view switch required a remote connection. Might be iframe-based. Argh, now I'm curious and I've got to look into this... ;)

So big thanks, congratulations, and keep up the great work Blogger devs!

Considering the service was down for the public for what I estimate to be around 15 minutes, that was one smooth upgrade, especially considering the scale. I deal with systems that have thousands of concurrent signed-in sessions, and I know what that means, so I can only imagine what they are facing...

Now this puts a whole new spin on a previous post I wrote just a few days ago. The subject might just become a lot more interesting to a lot more people who now have to switch their accounts and blogs to the new platform. See Integrating the Digg Box in your Blogger Beta Posts.

Update: 2006-12-19 ~ 9:10 PM:

It's confirmed. From the Blogger homepage: We're out of beta and ready to go.

Also, note the new no beta logo, once logged in:



This post, as it turns out, is truly an homage to what Blogger is all about to me: a publishing tool for life, as it happens, in real time.

Update: 2006-12-20 ~ 8:15 AM:

Wow, the speed improvements are considerable! :)